Saturday, February 15, 2014

From Commentary Magazine, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2014, by Tom Wilson:

Last week, Jonathan Tobin wrote here of how we were on the eve of a fourth Palestinian “no” to a peace agreement. It would appear that has now arrived, albeit slightly sooner than anyone had expected. Many observers assumed that once Secretary of State John Kerry got around to submitting his framework for a negotiated peace, Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas would then set about finding an excuse for rejecting it. What few could have predicted was that Abbas would find a way to reject the proposal before it was even submitted. Yet, this is precisely the impressive feat that Abbas has now accomplished.

Earlier today, Abbas’s spokespeople in Ramallah announced the PA’s new set of red lines in any negotiated peace settlement. Each and every one of these red lines blows to pieces anything Kerry was about to propose, as it does to the prospects for an agreement between the two sides in general. These red lines which Abbas details in a letter being sent to the U.S. and the Quartet seamlessly preempts whatever Kerry was likely to outline in his own peace parameters. In this way Abbas artfully dodges a scenario in which the Israelis would agree to a peace plan and the Palestinians would come under pressure not to derail yet another effort to resolve the conflict.

Abbas’s new red lines block just about every concession that the Israelis, and even the U.S., have requested.

Abbas demands: a total Israeli withdrawal from all territories that went to Israel in 1967; that Israel complete that withdrawal within three to four years; that the Palestinians not be required to recognize the Jewish state; that east Jerusalem be specified as the capital of a Palestinian state; the release of all Palestinian prisoners; and resolving the refugee issue along the lines of UN General Assembly resolution 194, which in essence means sending those Palestinians claiming to be refugees, not to a Palestinian state, but to Israel, thus terminating the existence of the Jewish state Abbas refuses to recognize.

“Without these principles there can be no just and comprehensive peace in the region,” stated Abbas’s spokesman Abu Rudeineh. So it seems we can now bid farewell to Kerry’s rather shambolic efforts for reaching a negotiated peace, much of which have been marred by the trading of insults and accusations between the State Department and Israeli politicians, all the while with the EU standing on the sidelines, issuing threats about the repercussions for Israel should talks fail. In fact, earlier today EU parliamentary president Martin Shulz was in Israel’s Knesset lecturing Israelis (in German) on making “painful concessions for peace,” bemoaning the hardships he accused Israel of having inflicted on the Palestinians.

Israel’s chief negotiator, Tzipi Livni, recently suggested that on the matter of the Palestinians accepting the Jewish state we might be in for a surprise. As it turned out, we weren’t. No one will be surprised by this rejection from the Palestinians, even if its early timing will have caught some a little off-guard. Even President Obama, who had been speaking of Kerry’s framework having a less than 50 percent likelihood of success, won’t be surprised when he receives Abbas’s letter. And Kerry, who was seeing all of this unfold close-up, surely won’t be able to claim to be surprised either.

As it was, the State Department was increasingly looking like it was about to try strong-arming the Israelis into accepting a framework, even on such unacceptable matters as a full Israeli withdrawal from the Jordan valley. Kerry was beginning to issue thinly veiled threats to the Israelis about what might become of Israel should it not find a way to appease Palestinian demands. There were also rumors that the State Department was trying to get the White House to back efforts to pressure the Israelis into accepting a deal even less to Israel’s liking than the one it originally seemed Kerry was about to come up with. Now, presumably, Prime Minister Netanyahu won’t have to worry about being asked to accept parameters that no Israeli leader could be expected to inflict on their people. Instead, Abbas has most likely deflected that whole unpleasant business.

What remains to be seen is how the EU, the State Department, J Street, the boycotters, the writers ofHaaretz and the New York Times, and indeed Abbas himself will manage to pin this whole debacle on Israel and Netanyahu.

U.S.-brokered Middle East peace talks have suddenly focused on the long-ignored escape of more than 700,000 Jewish refugees from North Africa and the Middle East to safety in Israel since 1948.

While the 700,000 Palestinian refugees who left Israel since 1948 have been cared for by U.N. programs in camps from Gaza to Damascus, the Jewish refugees from Arab lands have never won U.N. support or obtained restitution of their properties left behind.

A senior U.S. State Department official told Jewish leaders in January that the draft peace "framework" would include compensation for the Jews who fled Arab lands, the New York Times reported.

These Jewish communities had been deeply rooted for centuries: in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Iraq; they predated the rise of Islam in the 7th century.

Indeed, in 1965, before the Jewish flight took place, I first visited the Moroccan Jewish neighborhoods known as the "mellahs" in Rabat and in Marrakesh. I met Jews wearing traditional gelaba cloaks and yellow Moroccan slippers. Some spoke little Arabic or French but still spoke the Berber language that predates the Arab conquest.

During my visit back then, I shared the Passover seder meal with Rabat Rabbi David Cohen and learned that many Jews were quietly seeking to leave and head to France or Israel.

At that time, King Hassan II wanted the 300,000 Moroccan Jews to stay put and he sent his son, now King Mohammad Sixth, to a synagogue on the Jewish New Year to convey the royal family regards.

But after Jewish forces routed Arab armies in the 1948 war for independence, and then in 1955 wrested the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, anti-Jewish sentiment spread. Already in 1965 the Moroccan synagogues no longer had any marker or mezuzah in front. Jews quietly left their homes and businesses and took small boats across the Mediterranean to escape.

After the 1967 victory by Israel over Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the Six-Day War, anti-Jewish riots and pogroms took place across the Arab world. The floodgates of refugee flight had opened and rulers from Cairo to Baghdad arranged for Jews to sign away their land, homes, businesses and other property before leaving.

In Basra, Iraq, in 2003, I noticed some curious adjoined housing along a canal and was told "that's where the Jews lived for 400 years" before they vanished from Iraq, mostly ending up in Israel after 1967. Only one Jew remained in that ancient city. On my flight out of Iraq I sat next to a Christian clergyman who told me he was helping to provide food and medicine for the last Jew in the city - an elderly Jewish woman.

The treatment of the two refugee communities has been markedly different and the suggestion that someone - U.S., UN, EU or perhaps multinational banks - might propose compensation to the Jews is remarkable.

Jewish refugees from Arab lands had a tough time at first in Israel. They faced discrimination by the Jews from Europe who founded the state and considered European culture and intellect superior to the "Oriental" Jews.

Many of the Jews from Arab lands were sent to live in barracks in the desert and build new towns far from the comforts and educational advantages of Tel Aviv and Haifa.

The bleak settlements they lived in were a far cry from the ancient stone pathways and palm trees of their North African cities and towns. But they were free to educate their children, find work where they wanted and become full members of Israel's society and economy.

On the other hand, the 700,000 Palestinian refugees who fled Israel were kept in camps. Arab leaders decided to maintain them as refugees to pressure Israel. Fedayeen killers were recruited and trained in the camps for attacks inside Israel. Life was bleak in Palestinian refugee camps and hatred of Jews was the unifying truth. Instead of letting the Palestinian refugees settle in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt - where local people spoke the same language and shared the Muslim faith - the Palestinians were barred from adopting local citizenship and escaping their refugee status.

The United States has been the largest donor to the enormous expense - nearly $1 billion in 2013 - of caring for 4.8 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants. After the U.S. came nine European countries. The Islamic Development Bank was 10th largest donor and Saudi Arabia 15th.

I asked a prominent Lebanese leader a few years ago, "Why not let the 300,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon out of the camps and let them become citizens?"

"Never," he said. "They must not be part of our balance of communities. They must go back to Israel."

However Israelis of all political persuasion agree on one thing: not to accept millions of refugees bred to hate Israel and Jews.

So the new plan being crafted by Secretary of State John Kerry and his team calls for:

-Arab refugees would "return" but not to Israel. They could resettle in the new Palestinian state on the West Bank and would receive compensation.

-Jewish refugees from Arab lands would get some compensation for their lost property.

The very fact that the peace framework mentions that Jewish refugees from Arab lands are entitled to some form of compensation may do a lot to get support for a two-state solution - Palestine and Israel living side by side in peace - from hawkish Sephardic Jews and their descendants who left behind billions in property.

But it remained unclear who would provide the compensation and how much it would amount to.

*ABOUT THE WRITER

Ben Barber has covered the Middle East for 30 years for the Baltimore Sun, London Observer, Toronto Globe and Mail and other publications.

New BESA Center Study: Myths and Facts in Israeli-Palestinian Water Conflict

A study by Prof. Haim Gvirtzman, based on newly-released statistical information, has just been published (18.1.2012) by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. The study refutes once and for all Palestinian claims that Israel is denying West Bank Palestinians water rights negotiated under the Oslo Accords or preventing Palestinian growth by restricting water supply. The study also proposes a practical plan for Israeli-Palestinian water sharing into the future.

In the first-of-its-kind study published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, hydrologist Prof. Haim Gvirtzman of the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University examines Palestinian arguments against Israel by presenting detailed information about water supply systems presently serving Israelis and Palestinians and discussing international law. Gvirtzman shows that the Palestinians have little basis for their water demands. In fact, the data brought to light by Gvirtzman for the first time shows that currently there is almost no difference in per-capita consumption of natural water between Israelis and Palestinians.

Gvirtzman relies on previously classified data, recently released for publication by the Israeli Water Authority – 15 years after the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian interim agreement in this regard.

The Palestinian Authority claims that it suffers from water shortages in its towns and villages due to the Israeli occupation and it cites international law in support of its claims. PA claims amount to more than 700 million cubic meters (MCM) of water per year, including rights over the groundwater reservoir of the Mountain Aquifer, water rights in the Gaza Strip Coastal Aquifer and the Jordan River. These demands amount to more than 50 percent of the total natural water available between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

But contrary to Palestinian claims, Israel has fulfilled all of its obligations according to the agreements it signed in 1995 with the Palestinian Authority, and in fact has exceeded them. The PA currently consumes 200 MCM of water every year (with Israel providing about 50 MCM of this) – which, under the accords, is more than Israel it supposed to provide a full-fledged Palestinian state under a final settlement arrangement!

Gvirtzman shows that large difference in water usage that existed in 1967, when the administration of Judea and Samaria was handed over from Jordan to Israel, has been reduced over the last 40 years and is now negligible. As well, the per capita domestic water consumption of the Palestinians is significantly higher than the minimum human needs defined by the World Health Organization.

In contrast, the Palestinians have violated their part of the agreement drilling over 250 unauthorized wells, which draw about 15 MCM a year of water, and connecting these pirate wells to its electricity grid. Moreover, the PA has illegally and surreptitiously connected itself in many places to the water lines of Israel's Mekorot National Water Company – stealing Israel's water.

Palestinian famers also wildly overwater their crops through old-fashioned, wasteful flooding methods. Gvirtzman says that at least a third of the water being pumped out the ground by the Palestinians (again, in violation of their accords with Israel) is wasted through leakage and mismanagement. No recycling of water takes place and no treated water is used for agriculture.

In fact, 95 percent of the 56 million cubic meters of sewage produced by the Palestinians each year is not treated at all. Only one sewage plant has been built in the West Bank in the last 15 years, despite there being a $500 international donor fund available for this purpose. “The Palestinians refuse to build sewage treatment plants,” Gvirtzman says. “The PA is neither judicious nor neighborly in its water usage and sewage management.”

Gvirtzman further shows that the Palestinians have little basis for their water demands according to international legal norms. First, the signed water agreement overrules all other parameters. Second, Israel's historical possession of the Mountain Aquifer was established in the 1940s. Third, the Palestinians should not exploit groundwater from the Western Aquifer, which is fully utilized by Israel, before first exploiting groundwater from the non-utilized Eastern Aquifer.

Finally, the Palestinians should be preventing leaks in domestic pipelines, implementing conservative irrigation techniques, and reusing sewage water as irrigation. The fact that they have taken none of these steps and have not adopted any sustainable development practices precludes their demands for additional water from Israel.

Israel believes that the water issue could be transformed from a source of controversy and tension to a source of understanding and cooperation. Gvirtzman’s study puts forth a plan that can efficiently and quickly solve the current and future water shortages on both sides. The proposed plan, based on sustainable development and advanced technologies, would supply the sufficient quantity of water needed at least until 2030 and still leave some reserves.

Prof. Gvirztman’s study on water issues was first presented as part of a fall 2011 conference at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University on the “Threat of Agro-Terrorism,” held in cooperation with the Counter Agro-Terrorism Research Center (CATRC) of Israel.

Monday, February 10, 2014

US Secretary of State John Kerry is warning that Israel faces economic embargoes if a US-drafted framework agreement with the Palestinians fails to go forward. While the merits of the current American diplomatic initiative are debatable, Kerry's warnings clearly have a deleterious effect:

they feed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign being waged by Israel's enemies, and

create the false impression that this campaign is a significant threat to Israel.

The BDS effort has thus far had little success. For the moment and for the near future, it constitutes a bearable nuisance for Israel, not more.

Due to wise economic policies that have gradually distanced Israel from its socialist past, the Jewish state has adapted well to a globalized economy. With the exception of isolated cases, Israeli exports are well received all over the world, particularly if they are competitive in quality and price. Israel has found ways to penetrate important markets and Israeli products are even imported by Arab states. Moreover, some Israeli-made products have unique qualities which make them indispensable. Israeli high-tech components have become part of core embedded systems of many global brands. Most Israeli businessmen hardly meet obstacles that are connected to political animosity toward Israel.
Moreover, it is important to note that many previous American diplomatic efforts to bring peace in the Middle East have failed, yet this has not created long-term adversarial conditions for Israel – even if Israel was partly blamed for the lack of American success. The linkage between American diplomatic efforts and the fate of Israeli economy is tenuous, at best.
A survey of the international scene also indicates that the impact of BDS efforts is unlikely to grow dramatically in the coming years. Attempts to boycott Israeli products are unlikely to be successful in America, Israel's number one export country. American public support for Israel has remained stable for the past two decades at over 60 percent. A variety of legislative steps have already been adopted to prevent a boycott of Israeli products or institutions. Even the current administration, which has been more than once at loggerheads with Israel on Middle East issues, firmly states its opposition to BDS.
Several Western European states, prime recipients of Israel's exports, are indeed displaying a growing anti-Israel bias, despite good bilateral relations. Many Europeans have lost the shame of being anti-Semitic as Holocaust memories fade away. Therefore, a heightened boycott of Israeli products is conceivable. Yet as the Euro crisis lingers and the European population ages, the purchasing power of European countries is in decline. In addition, even in Europe there are strong pockets of pro-Israeli sentiment. The EU itself has announced that it has no plans whatsoever to boycott the Israeli economy. Israeli products originating beyond the Green Line are a different story, but only a small part of Israeli economic activity is sourced in the settlements.
Israeli exports are gradually, albeit too slowly, being redirected to Asian markets. The large Chinese and Indian economies are growing fast, and these societies do not carry historical anti-Semitic baggage. Moreover, Israel is generally viewed in Asia as a successful country and a model to be emulated. This is true even in Central Asian states whose populations are largely Muslim.
At the same time, the political clout of the Arab world – considered a natural ally of the Palestinians – is decreasing. The Arab world is in the midst of a deep political and socio-economic crisis, with failed states such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya. Egypt, the most important Arab state, faces tremendous domestic challenges and is allied with Israel against Islamic radicalism. Saudi Arabia is more concerned with the rise of Iran than the Palestinian issue, as is most of the Sunni world. Finally, the growing energy independence of the US diminishes Arab leverage.
Thus, Israel has overcome the boycott of the relatively stronger Arab world, and the BDS movement's attempts to harm the Israeli economy are unlikely to produce a different outcome.
Indeed, it takes a lot of imagination to see a concerted international effort to boycott the Jewish State. If Israel continues to make products with a clear qualitative edge at competitive prices, there will be many customers to buy them.
This leads to the conclusion that the boycott threat is exaggerated. Secretary Kerry is simply echoing the arguments of the Israeli political Left, which claims that an agreement with the Palestinians is the only way to escape international isolation. Moreover, irresponsible elements of the Left are asking for foreign pressure on Israel, realizing that they have no chance to change Israeli policies at the ballot box. The Left's electoral decline makes it more desperate and less democratic; hence its conclusion that "Israel has to be saved from herself" by the international community.
Fortunately, Israel is not internationally isolated and most of the world does not care enough about the Palestinians to sacrifice the benefits of good bilateral relations with Israel. Israel has the leeway to decide for itself what is good for its future.

*Prof. Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, is a professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University, and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Sunday, February 09, 2014

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who this past week claimed Palestinian lineage to the Canaanites, is not the first Palestinian to reinvent history • A study of history shows that the roots of present-day Palestinians lie far from here.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat

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Photo credit: AP

Palestinians in today's Ramallah

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Photo credit: Ziv Koren

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat

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Photo credit: AP

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The noted scholar of nationalist movements, Anthony Smith, once made a differentiation between two kinds of methods in constructing nationalist identity. The first method is determining a national grouping on the basis of a shared culture and history. The second method is used by nations who do not have such a common history and thus need to invent it all from scratch.

In his book "From Jerusalem to Mecca and Back," Professor Yitzhak Reiter notes that history is not always exact. In the most extreme instances, it is a fabrication. The case of Saeb Erekat, the head of the Palestinian negotiating team, appears to be one of these instances.

Erekat, who this past week lectured to Justice Minister Tzipi Livni that he and his Canaanite forefathers lived in Jericho 3,000 years ago before the arrival of Joshua and his Sons of Israel, is not the first Palestinian who has reinvented himself by drawing a direct line connecting the Canaanites from biblical days to the Palestinians of today. Many Palestinians preceded him. Some of them viewed themselves as the descendants of the Jebusites. Others cast themselves as the descendants of the ancient Philistines.

The core of Arab propaganda has for years been based on the claim that the Palestinian people have been settling in present-day Israel for thousands of years, well before the Jews arrived as "occupiers." As the argument goes, the Palestinians, by virtue of their being descendants of the Canaanites, or the Philistines, or the Jebusites, are the real indigenous nation that sprung organically from this land. Then, as now, so the argument goes, they are being occupied by the Jews.

Not only do the Palestinians deny, erase, and distort Jewish history -- sometimes going to absurd lengths -- but they also invent thousands of years of a new history of their own. All of a sudden, the biblical Canaanites are Arabs, Jesus is a Palestinians who preached the virtues of Islam and not Christianity, and Moses? Well, Moses was a Muslim, after all.

A short, brief perusal of historical documents, expert testimonials, and new and old publications as well as quotes found on the Internet from Israeli Arab and Palestinian sources is all one needs to know that the roots of present-day Palestinian families lie far from here and that the Palestinian narrative, the cause of which Erekat has taken up, is an imaginary one.

Take, for example, the case of Salma Fayumi, a resident of Kafr Qasim who demonstrated her cooking prowess on the hit show "Master Chef." Fayumi certainly did not intend to stick her head into the tumultuous debate of where Palestinians originated, but she may have unwittingly done so by proudly showing off her Kushari dish that she prepared, "Egyptian cuisine made of rice and lentil."

"My family came from Egypt, from Faiyum, and I am Salma Fayumi from Faiyum," the cook from Kafr Qasim said.

Fathi Hamad, the interior minister in the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, who cried out for Egyptian assistance during the IDF's operations in the area in March 2012, is another one who certainly had no intention of spoiling Erekat's theories of Canaanite-based land claims. Yet, there can be no misinterpreting his recent statements.

"When we ask for your help, it is so that we can continue the jihad," he said. "Praise God, we all have Arab roots and every Palestinian in Gaza and all over Palestine can prove their Arab roots, whether they be in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, or anywhere else. We have blood ties."

"Speaking personally, half of my family is Egyptian," he said. "Where is your mercy? There are over 30 families in the Gaza Strip with the surname Al-Masri, 'Egyptian.' Brothers, half of the Palestinians are Egyptian, and the other half are Saudi. Who are the Palestinians? We have many families called Al-Masri whose roots are Egyptian! They come from Alexandria, Cairo, and Aswan. We are Egyptians. We are Arabs. We are Muslims."

The one who most urgently sought to drive a nail into the coffin of the debate over the Palestinians' Canaanite origins is the former MK Azmi Bishara, the Israeli Arab Christian founder of the Balad party. He fled Israel after he was suspected of spying and assisting Hezbollah. In the preface to Benedict Anderson's famous work Imagined Communities, Bishara writes:

"Modern Arab nationalism makes it seem like the fact that it was created in the 19th century, like other national movements, subtracts from its worth or its justness." "It feels obligated to nationalize the history of Arab-speaking peoples and to make it into a national history that goes back to before the time of Islam all the way to contemporary times..." he wrote.

"Acting out of a need to compete with Zionism, the Palestinian national movement has anchored its origins with those of the Canaanites," Bishara wrote. "In doing so, it achieve its own, unique start-off point in the past that precedes that of the Hebrew tribes, which Zionism claims as its natural descendants."

More blunt statements were made by Walid Shoebat, a former Muslim and Fatah activist who converted to Christianity and became an ardent and vocal supporter and advocate for Israel and Christianity. Shoebat, who immigrated to the United States from Jordan, claims that everyone he met in Palestine "knew to trace the roots of their familes to the country from which their great-grandfathers came."

"We knew full well that our origin was not Canaanite, despite what they tried to teach us," he said. "My grandfather would often remind us that our village, Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, was empty when his father arrived there with six other families. Today, there are over 30,000 residents in the village."

Look it up in the Quran

Professor Rafi Israeli, a Middle Eastern scholar and an expert on Islam from the Hebrew University, has written over 20 books on Arabs and Islam. The link that the Palestinians have tried to create with the ancient Canaanites is "absurd" in his mind.

"The early origins of the Arabs who came to this country are in the Arabian peninsula," he said. "The first ones came from there. Now they are standing on their heads. Instead of saying that they are Arabs who immigrated to Canaan and turned it into a Muslim country, they have rendered themselves indigenous Canaanites.""Even their Arab surnames give clear clues that they immigrated here," the professor said. "In Umm al-Fahm, there are four large clans who originated in Egypt. In the Old City of Jerusalem, one can find the Moroccan Quarter, which was home to Muslims who came from North Africa, the Maghreb, and settled in the Land of Israel."

"Furthermore, the Ottoman Empire transferred populations from place to place in order to tighten its control over those areas," he said. "Take, for example, the Circassians, Muslims from the Caucuses who were brought here and have settled here since.""The Palestinians don't really have roots here," the professor said. "They know this very well, so they are trying to invent origins for themselves. Whenever you offer historic or archaeological criticism of this nonsense, learned scholars the world over immediately insist that you 'respect the narrative.' It doesn't matter one bit to them whether there is historical truth there. If we do not debunk this, it will be accepted as fact. If you repeat a lie thousands of times, it eventually becomes accepted as true, so we mustn't keep quiet."

The title of Professor Nissim Dana's ninth book, which was released this week and is devoted to the our competing religious narratives with the Palestinians, can be translated into English as "To Whom Does This Land Belong -- A Reexamination of the Quran." For years, Dana served as the head of the non-Jewish department of the Religious Affairs Ministry. Today, he is the head of the Multidisciplinary Department for Social and Humanities Studies at Ariel University.

For those who are unfamiliar with the holiest book of Islam, Dana's conclusions might come as a surprise.

"In the Quran, which according to Islam is the word of God whose holiness cannot be minimized or exceeded, there are 10 passages which state that Allah bequeathed the land to the Jewish people," Dana said. "In all of these instances, it is written that there is not only the right but the obligation placed on the Sons of Israel to inherit the land. On the other hand, there is no mention in the Quran of bequeathing the land to Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians, or any other nation not called the Jewish people.""Moreover, the current claim going around, which states that the nations from which the land was conquered by the Jewish people -- the Canaanites, the Jebusites, the Anakites -- were 'Arab' doesn't square with the fact that according to Islam itself, the Israelites were commanded by Allah to conquer the land from those nations after they had defiled him by worshiping idols."

In his book, Dana cites the original Arabic text and includes his own translation and the interpretation of the text. He also gives a synopsis of dozens of scholarly works devoted to understanding the Quran. According to the professor, most of these works support the conclusion which bolsters the Jewish people's claim of a historic link to the Land of Israel.

"Even Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, who is recognized by Jews as the Rashi of the Muslims and one of history's most distinguished exegetes of the Quran, takes this approach and even delineates the borders of the Land of Israel 'which stretched from the Euphrates River to the east bank of the Nile'."

"As for Jerusalem, from Chapter 2, Verse 142 onward in the Quran, the city was mentioned in the context of which direction one needs to turn in order to pray," Dana said. "But that was to entice the Jews to convert to Islam, since the proper direction for Muslims to pray toward is the Kaba in Mecca. With regards to the famous story about the Prophet Muhammad's ascendance to heaven, after his overnight journey from Mecca to Jerusalem on the back of a wild animal known as 'al Burak,' the Quran has something to say about this.""The Quran mentions the testimony of Aisha, the prophet's beloved wife, who said that she and her husband stayed together throughout the night he supposedly went up to heaven," Dana said. "So, according to Aisha, the whole episode was nothing more than a dream that was dreamt at night. It wasn't really an ascendance to the heavens."

"Ibn Taymiyyah, the Islamic scholar, philosopher, and theologian who died in 1328, denounced as a lie the deceitful claim made today that Muhammad left evidence of his visit to the Temple Mount," Dana said. "Solomon's Stables, which the Muslims of our generation have turned into a mosque, are specifically cited by one of Islam's grandest scholars, Ibn Khaldun, as part of the Temple."

Dana's re-examination of the Quran leads him back to the same conclusion. "There is no basis for the Palestinian claim which identifies themselves as descendants of the Canaanites," he said. "The Muslims who live here in contemporary times and whose forebears became Muslims in 622 originated in the Arabian peninsula. The claim that they are the descendants of the Canaanites is akin to an 'own goal' in soccer, since the Quran says that the Canaanites were ordered expelled from the holy land by Allah after they had defiled the land."

Mass immigration

The Palestinian narrative as defined by Erekat -- the one which lays claim to a continuous Palestinian presence here since the Canaanite period -- doesn't stand the test of historical evidence and testimonies. Dr. Shaul Bartal, a Middle Eastern scholar who teaches at Bar-Ilan University, says that in many Palestinian history books, heavy emphasis is placed on "the Arab conquest of Palestine" in 638, "a conquest that for 1,300 years made Palestine into Islamic territory."

Bartal said that the waves of immigration from the Arabian Peninsula and the subsequent arrivals of Arabs from Transjordan and Syria are what led to the continued settlement of Arabs in this country. "Even in Ramallah, the administrative capital of the Palestinian Authority, the origins of Arab families are traced back to those who came here from Jordan in the late 15th century," he said.

A research study which Bartal co-authored with Dr. Rivka Shpak Lissak shows that the four main clans that make up the population of Umm el-Fahm -- Makhagna, Jabrin, Mahamid, and Aghbariya -- trace their roots back to families who immigrated to Palestine in the 17th century onward from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Syria. It was only afterward during the 19th century when many families from Egypt and Transjordan joined them.

A number of historical sources indicate that in previous centuries, wide swaths of the Land of Israel were abandoned and left desolate. Bartal and others poured over these studies. Charles William Eliot, the president of Harvard University, visited the country in 1867. During his trip, he described the Galilee as a place of emptiness and misery.

In his famous book "Innocents Abroad," Mark Twain recalls not seeing a living soul throughout his journey. In 1874, the Reverend Samuel Manning wrote: "But where were the inhabitants?" In 1857, James Finn, who served as British consul in Jerusalem, noted that to large extent the country was empty of inhabitants. Even a German encyclopedia that was published in 1827 describes the country as "a deserted land in which bands of Arab robbers roam around in every part."

"The Palestinians," Bartal declares, "are not the 'farmers who have lived in Palestine for generations,' but rather immigrants who only arrived recently. It was only toward the latter stages of the 19th century that the country began to blossom thanks to the emergence of a new presence -- Zionism -- and the amazing results. In 1878, the population of the country numbered 141,000 Muslims who lived here permanently, with at least 25 percent of them considered to be newly arrived immigrants who came mostly from Egypt."

"Various studies done over a span of years by Moshe Brawer, Gideon Kressel, and other scholars clearly show that most Arab families who settled in the villages along the coastal plain and the area that would later become the State of Israel originated from Sudan, Libya, Egypt, and Jordan," said Bartal. "Other studies show that the waves of immigrants came here in droves from Arab countries during the period of the British Mandate."

Perhaps the most famous book on the subject, "From Time Immemorial," which was written by Joan Peters, found that "there wasn't a situation whereby an Arab nation that has been around 'from time immemorial' was pushed aside and driven away, but rather a completely contrary state of affairs: a nation -- the Jewish people -- whose presence attracted Arabs to the country, and the Jews' land, which was meant to serve as a home for them, was taken away from them with the arrival of Arab immigrants."

The Arab immigrants were drawn to the land because Jewish settlement there brought on development of economic opportunities as well as improvement in sanitation and medicine.

In 1948, the Arabs of Mandatory Palestine numbered 1.3 million people, while the Jewish community numbered just 600,000 people, this despite the huge waves of aliyah.

In 1939, then-U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said that the immigration of Arabs to Palestine since 1921 was outpacing the immigration of Jews during that same period. Winston Churchill, who would later become prime minister of Britain, commented on the massive waves of Arab immigration into the country during that time. "Despite the fact that they were never persecuted, masses of Arabs poured into the country and multiplied until the Arab population grew more than what all of world Jewry could add to the Jewish population," Churchill observed.

In "From Time Immemorial," Peters cites extensive research which she did in order to show that among those who claimed to be Palestinian Arabs were Balkans, Greeks, Syrians, Latins, Egyptians, Turks, Armenians, Italians, Persians, Kurds, Germans, Afghans, Circassians, Bosnians, Sudanese, Samaritans, Algerians, Motawile, and Tartars.

An education of lies

None of these facts register with the Palestinians. The imaginary link between the Canaanites and the Palestinians as supposed proof of a stronger, more legitimate Palestinian claim to the land has been inculcated in classrooms by way of PA-issued textbooks. Ido Mizrahi, a government official in the Strategic Affairs Ministry who has investigated Palestinian incitement, found that children from second grade until high school in the West Bank and Gaza are taught that the Canaanites were Arabs.

"The Canaanite Arabs were the first to live in Palestine," reads a second-grade textbook in the Palestinian school system. The goal of the lesson is clearly stated. "It is for the student to create a linkage between the land of Palestine and the Canaanite people that lived there."

In an educational textbook used by seventh grade students, children are taught that "the Canaanite Palestinians are those who invented the ancient alphabet."

According to Mizrahi, while the Canaanite identity doesn't take up a major part of the learning material given to children, these short, oft-repeated messages lead to one conclusion: this country has been settled by Arabs long before the Jews arrived.

Perhaps an examination of the colors of the Palestinian national flag will tell the real story. Bartal notes that "the flag is missing its own uniqueness."

"The white symbolizes the Umayyad caliphate (650-750 A.D.), the black represents the Abbasid dynasty, and the green represents Islam as well as the Shiite Fatimid caliphate, while the red is the color of the Hashemites, the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad," Bartal said.

"Many Arab countries have identical or nearly identical flags," he said. "Jordan, Iraq up to 1958, the countries of western Sahara, Kuwait, and Sudan [all had the same or almost the same designs]. The similarity stems from the fact that this flag represents Arab nationalism, and there is nothing there that links the Palestinians with the biblical Canaanites."

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